Present day electronic and computer synthesized music systems employ equal temperament as the prevalent built-in tuning system. However, it is well known to good musicians playing string and other instruments where pitch can be controlled, as well as to those using the human voice, that, for proper music realization and expressiveness, equal temperament is an insufficient compromise. Gannon U.S. Pat. No. 5,501,130 provides an exhaustive historical treatment of different static tuning systems and antecedents.
Static tuning systems other than equal temperament, in which a note always has the same pitch (except if the tuning is transposed), are cumbersome to use in the music, e.g., of the last three hundred years requiring transposition. As a result, such static tuning systems are little used electronically, and, moreover, importantly, do not satisfy the requirements of expressive intonation. The relative inflexibilities of tuning a piano have largely been accepted by default for electronic and computer music as the path of least resistance. The subtleties of expressive intonation have not been realized systematically by electronic and computer means, thereby keeping such music historically continuingly impoverished.